My Share of the Task

by General Stanley McChrystal

  At the stadium we found swarms of people. This was Reception Day, better known as R-Day, and 1,378 new cadets had shown up to be officially “received” into the academy. From the stadium we were bused to a series of concrete courtyards walled off by barracks that cadets call “the Area,” a desolate stretch that I would come to know intimately. That morning it was controlled chaos.

  From the perspective of a new cadet (as we were called until the end of Beast Barracks), upperclassmen ran the show. Postured like sentries in gray trousers and starched white shirts, they clenched their jaws and pulled their hat brims low over stern eyes. They controlled our every movement. Through decades of practice, R-Day processes neared scientific precision. The circuit ensured that all new cadets that day could be sworn in, stripped of outside possessions, supplied with new ones, measured, weighed, outfitted, sheared, scared, and, finally, paraded in front of their families in a matter of hours. For the academy, it was an impressive feat. Families saw the often-shaggy high school graduates they’d deposited earlier that morning reappear as uniformed, disciplined soldiers. For some parents and siblings, it probably felt like a miracle.

  For new cadets it felt more like being rats in a maze. Directed through the process by an upperclassman known as the Man in the Red Sash, who tracked our progress on cards safety-pinned to our shorts, we felt like fools. Outfitted in T-shirts, knee-high black socks, and black dress shoes, we looked like fools as well. But it was efficient. Before arriving, I expected the hazing and knew to address the older cadets in formulaic “Yes, sirs” and “No, sirs.” But I had always regarded West Point as an inconvenient but necessary hurdle I had to jump to be a soldier. By the middle of my first day, the obstacle appeared gigantic, four years like an eternity.

  Of the nearly fourteen hundred who stood on the point of land overlooking the Hudson River that evening, more than a third would not graduate; 180 would leave before the summer was over. Some admitted cadets had quit that first day. But more than thirty of those newly shorn plebes, including Ray Odierno, Dave Rodriguez, Bill Caldwell, David Barno, Frank Kearney, Frank Helmick, Mike Barbero, and Guy Swan, would serve as general officers in turbulent times for our army and nation.

  Earlier that day we had eaten our first meal in cavernous Washington Hall, the cadet dining facility, as we had every other meal before. That evening, we ate our second meal as we would eat every meal thereafter: by their rules. Seated “family style” at a table for ten, two upperclassmen ruled eight new cadets, controlling what and how we ate. Correctly reciting “plebe knowledge” we were all required to memorize might yield a rushed bite, or more, depending on how hard-ass our elders decided to be. Knowing Schofield’s definition of discipline—which ironically counsels that the “discipline which makes the soldiers of a free country reliable in battle is not to be gained by harsh or tyrannical treatment”—might allow a cadet a quick forkful of potatoes before a minder ordered the utensil placed back on the table. Routinely, we left plates of untouched food at the ends of meals. Food became a fixation.

  After dinner on the first night, we retired to our rooms, where our M14 rifles and other equipment had been placed on bunks before we arrived. I don’t remember exactly what I thought as our first day ended. Much of what I had seen that day seemed silly. But the ubiquitous tablets containing names of graduates who had fallen in battle did not. Many of the soldiers I admired for their battlefield leadership had begun where I was now, had navigated the same peculiar process, and had emerged with qualities I sought to emulate. Had this seemingly absurd process molded them? After a long, often disorienting day, it was too much to ponder. When we finally fell into our bunks to sleep, I think I took comfort in the fact that no matter how long I stayed in the Army, I’d never have to have another “first day” as a soldier.

  * * *

  After Beast Barracks, we settled into life as plebes. Like the peas on our plate during Beast, the minutes of the day throughout the academic year were not ours to consume freely. We necessarily became efficient. Reveille was at 0615 hours, and we arrived at formation ten minutes later in complete cadet uniform, clean and shaved. There were no wasted movements in those early minutes, especially in winter. Before entering the mess hall for breakfast, all four thousand cadets stood in formation outside the barracks, and the chain of command inspected our uniforms. The fife-and-drum corps accompanied every movement to, in, and from formation. The rest of the day was spent at class, with forty minutes for lunch. On autumn and spring afternoons, we either paraded for visitors or played sports, before rushing back to barracks to clean up, don our dress gray uniforms, and report to formation. Then the band fifed and drummed us back into the mess hall for dinner. After dinner was time for study before taps ended the day at 2300, when all rooms went dark. Some studious cadets covered their windows with blankets to hide the light or requested official permission to continue studying—known as “late lights.” I never much did that.

  I had a slow start academically, and for the first two years poor grades were a lurking threat to my cadet career. “The subjects which were dearest to the examiners,” Winston Churchill once wrote, “were almost invariably those I fancied least.” The same was true for me during plebe and yearling years, when the curriculum was loaded with math and science requirements. The system of daily recitation and grading begun under the early-nineteenth-century superintendence of Sylvanus Thayer, known as the Father of the Academy, was bad news for a poorly prepared student like me. In math class each day, including Saturday, we stood at the blackboard in front of a new problem that tested the previous night’s lesson, and “briefed the solution” to the class and instructor. I got crushed in math and over the first two years fared poorly in chalkboard battles with chemistry, physics, thermodynamics, and engineering. When I could, I retreated from my math and science textbooks to histories and biographies. Compared with Grant’s account of Shiloh in his memoirs, attempting to prove mathematical theorems in calculus was unbearable.

  Normally focused on daily requirements, West Point in 1972 felt estranged from the society it was meant to serve. A decade of fighting in Vietnam and a series of scandals like My Lai had degraded the military’s credibility with the country, and as cadets we were periodically reminded that we were out of step with the views, values, and lifestyles of many of our generation. On Saturday, October 21, we traveled to New Brunswick, New Jersey, for the Rutgers football game. We then were bused into Manhattan and allowed our first few hours of freedom since R-Day, but required to remain dressed in our distinctive gray cadet uniforms. Walking near Times Square, a friend and I heard a loud, long honk and looked up to see a forearm and middle finger poking out through a half-opened window of the passing car. As visible symbols, soldiers often receive praise or condemnation, and both reactions feel curiously undeserved. Yet the gap between us and American society was palpable—and disturbing.

  Cadets were not alone in feeling alienated. At the end of his tenure as superintendent of West Point in 1974, General William A. Knowlton invoked the academy’s historical role as an eighteenth-century fort when explaining to his successor that as superintendent he had spent four years defending “a stockade surrounded by attacking Indians.” West Point was training officers for an army that had lost its moral footing in the eyes of its country. And it was commissioning officers into an army that valued the ideals its graduates infused into the force but also thought some of those graduates were “prima donnas and spoiled brats,” in the words of Army chief of staff General Creighton Abrams, who had overseen the drawdown in Vietnam.

  If West Point felt like a penal colony, the feeling forged close bonds among cadets. My roommate for the second “detail” in the winter (we rotated rooms and roommates three times a year), and one of my best friends for four years, was Arthur Ken Liepold. It was hard to miss Kenny, and I noticed him early during Beast Barracks. He was an offensive tackle with an expansive frame, kind eyes, and dimples that appeare
d when he smiled and laughed, which he did a lot.

  Like most people, I was drawn to Kenny because he did not take anything or anyone at West Point too seriously, and did not suffer kindly those who did. His legendary devotion to friends, easygoing charisma, and disarming humor were antidotes to the rigor and pomp of West Point.

  Another friend I made early was Rick Bifulco. Stocky and quick, Bifulco was a star lacrosse player from Long Island but was built like a boxer from Brooklyn. He excelled in math and engineering but had a wickedly quick wit and a mischievous streak. Success in academics and athletics came easily to Rick, but from the beginning it was clear he valued the intangibles of camaraderie more than anything else. Rick, Kenny, and I became an unlikely but close trio for all four years.

  * * *

  All three of us were on hand for the historic mess hall rally-turned-riot of November 3, 1972, the night before the Army football team played Air Force at Michie Stadium. Pep rallies in the mess hall, in spite of the slight damage they caused, were an unofficial tradition and one of the few outlets for the cadets. But thus far that year the academy leadership had ordered the celebrations to be subdued—to the frustration of the corps.

  That afternoon, however, the commandant, Brigadier General Philip Feir, had filtered a message down through the companies to all cadets: The Commandant has determined that damage to the mess hall is of secondary importance to the morale of the corps. The implication could not have been clearer and the effect was electric. We entered the mess hall and took our places as usual.

  The mess hall, with hundred-foot ceilings, stone arches, and light filtering through stained-glass windows, normally felt like a church. Portraits of stern soldiers of yore lined the walls, peering down at cadets, who sat with their respective companies. There were eight companies seated during Beast, then thirty-six companies divided into four regiments when we joined the rest of the corps at the start of plebe year. Laid out like an asterisk, with six wings converging in the center, the mess hall was where General MacArthur, near the end of his life, bade adieu to “the corps, the corps, the corps” in his famous 1962 address to cadets. The wall at the end of the northwest wing was a massive mural from 1936, a Bayeux Tapestry–like panorama of twenty decisive battles.

  After a few moments the massive wood doors swung open and an army jeep, laden with members of the pep squad yelling into cone megaphones and pumping their fists, crept slowly down the aisle between the tables. Trailing the jeep, the academy’s brass band streamed through the door in double file, playing the Army fight song. The hall echoed with the sounds of horns and drums and the loud gurgling of the engine.

  The jeep veered left toward my company, the B Company of 1st Regiment, which sat at the foot of the mural. As it passed us, a cadet from my table took the water pitcher, ran up to the jeep, and dumped it on one of the rabble-rousers, soaking him and igniting mayhem. By the time the jeep completed a U-turn at the end of our wing and came rumbling back down the gauntlet toward the center, a huge layer cake had been smeared across its windshield. At that point, it was all over.

  Cadets threw opened milk cartons and heaps of mashed potatoes, dinner rolls, butter, handfuls of salt. I hurled cups of ice cream, pulling off the tabs and lobbing them like grenades. Across the hall, through the clouds of projectiles, cadets stacked dining tables into a multistory tower and climbed to the top. The steely marching band played on, a bit like the quartet on the deck of the Titanic, providing a booming soundtrack to the whole scene. When the din settled and cadets had launched their last missiles, the walls and the dark oil paintings had been streaked with food.

  In the glorious mess, two things were clear. First, the corps had never felt more like a brotherhood. (The next day, we dramatically upset Air Force.) Second, Feir, normally considered an old-guard martinet, had displayed uncommon leadership. Most would remember that on that day he understood that he led young men, not hollow gray uniforms.

  * * *

  If West Point was hard, I made it harder. During Beast, I recorded my first slug, slang for the academy’s punishment following an infraction. In that case it was for “disapprobation towards a cadet superior”: After an upperclassman berated a fellow cadet and me, he took a shortcut through a building to cut us off as we walked away, catching us laughing at his reprimand. Depending on severity, slugs earned some combination of demerits, room confinement, or hours marching on the Area. At the end of Beast Barracks I reported to the regular cadet company I would be a part of for the next four years with the uncommon and dubious distinction of a negative disciplinary mark already on my record.

  My second slug was more serious. Before spring finals, a girl I had been seeing scored Kenny and me some alcohol, and we drank it in our barracks room, a violation of regulations. What started as surreptitious sips of vodka mixed with White Rock soda evolved into two idiots playing air guitar to increasingly loud music. I’m not sure it was social drinking, but it was fun and I cherish it as a special memory of Kenny.

  Of course it ended badly. The next morning, one of our tactical officers, an army captain, found me in the basement showers of our barracks. Friends later told me that I tried, unsuccessfully, to hoist myself up off of the cold tile by grabbing at the stunned officer’s pants like a rope. I don’t remember. Two weeks later, a commandant’s board issued my punishment: forty-one demerits, sixty-six hours walking the Area, and three months of room confinement.

  Punishment of cadets had been artfully crafted. In the early nineteenth century, West Point officials deemed manual labor an inappropriate punishment for a cadet: It would have been an ungentlemanly task for a future officer. But they could make him do something that was tiring, embarrassing, and, most excruciating, accomplished nothing. So cadets ever since have been awarded “Area tours,” each representing an hour—two hours on Friday afternoon, and then three on Saturday—walking in our dress gray uniforms with rifles across the Area. As my bemused father explained to me, the Area does not make you smarter, braver, or more expert; even trench digging would offer some tangible benefit. At the academy, where we hoarded free minutes, walking the yard meant wasted hours.

  While I ran afoul of certain academy rules, I had respect for the tradition of honor embedded in the institution. My slugs were for infractions of West Point regulations, the same rules that governed how much rust was acceptable on a rifle (none) or how our rooms were to be kept (immaculate). The cadet honor code was entirely different, and there was a clear, bright line dividing shenanigans from transgressions against integrity. Failing to clean your barracks sink was a violation of the regulations and earned demerits. Lying to anyone about whether you had cleaned your sink was a violation of your honor and meant expulsion.

  When it was chartered in 1802, the academy adopted the unofficial code of honor that covered all levels of officer conduct in the regular Army. Infractions of the code were settled between cadets, usually in a formal fistfight. Eventually, the scope of the code narrowed, but the underlying aim remained the same: The code existed to ensure that the words of cadets and officers alike could always, in all situations, be taken as truth. Lies, even small ones, threatened that system of trust.

  The discussion about military honor was particularly fraught when I was a cadet. In the twilight of the Vietnam War, the Army was broken and sought to heal itself. The scandals of that war—particularly falsified body counts—had sent fissures through the officer corps, and West Point was severely shaken. Although I was probably more aware of these issues because of my father, it was obvious, even to cadets at West Point, that the Army had wounds that would take a long time to heal.

  The massacre of South Vietnamese civilians at My Lai in 1968, and the subsequent cover-up, had exemplified the challenge and had reached into the academy a few years before I arrived, when then–Major General Samuel Koster was superintendent. A West Point veteran of World War II and Korea, Koster had commanded the 23rd Infantry D
ivision, troops from which had perpetrated My Lai. In March 1970, the Peers Commission recommended he be criminally charged for his part in the cover-up and he was forced to leave the academy. Before he left, he famously warned the assembled corps of cadets, “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”

  Beyond Koster, other graduates were implicated in the myriad scandals of Vietnam. Although accounting for only one tenth of the officer corps in 1976, West Pointers were meant to catalyze honor and discipline in the rest of the Army. But in the eyes of many, they had fallen short in that mission. During my time there, it struggled to repair the damage. Progress was made there and across the Army, but shortly before I graduated in June 1976, the academy was rocked by the largest cheating scandal in its history. More than a hundred cadets in the cow, or junior, class one year behind mine, including members of the honor committee, faced expulsion for colluding on an electrical engineering exam. The scandal spurred national media attention and congressional hearings. If honor could not be safe at West Point, what chance did it stand in the nation as a whole?

  When I arrived, the code had been distilled to a simple directive: “A cadet will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those who do.” Cadet leadership added the last part, the “toleration clause,” only in 1970, but it had existed for many years in the self-policing spirit of the corps. If the code’s basic wording became simpler over time, its enforcement did not. In the late nineteenth century, cadets elected a “vigilance committee” to police honor violations and field accusations. When a cadet was found guilty of an honor violation, the committee made sure that he left the academy. Eventually, the committee became an advisory body without explicit punitive powers, although the commandant almost always expelled a cadet whom the committee found to have violated the code.